[PaulHoule]

It's also a work of fiction where Spock says "we have a 13.653% chance of surviving this" but they always survive. That is, it is driven by pataphysics instead of physics, metaphysics, etc, or like looking at Batman or The Punisher for advice as to how to fight crime.

(I do wish Spock had been a Bayesian and said something like "the probability of us surviving is β(17,82)" since you kinda need error bars for your probability estimates if you are putting them to work.)

[jareklupinski]

I always felt that this is just because TV shows (and any story, really) happens to follow the winners of these improbabilities :)

The first or second crews to have been wiped out (even if their chances of survival were higher) would have made for a much shorter story.